It isn't nice to waste water

Las Vegas, Nevada is rapidly becoming known as the city of fountains here in the United States. I am not quite sure why a resort in the middle of the desert is going so hog wild for these water features. Especially since they are so short of water in Las Vegas that they pay residents to take up grass on their lawns and plant rocks instead.

The town of Las Vegas is negotiating with other areas in northern Nevada and even other states for water rights. Like Phoenix did they want to build canals to bring water to their fountains, and swimming pools, and golf courses and sidewalk misters. Heaven forbid that people visiting the desert should get hot and dry.

The Bellagio and Caesars Forum, two of the big fountain owners, say that the fountains use recycled water and ergo don't waste this precious resource in a town without it. Evaporation they say is negligible. Which brings me to my little fountain inside my studio in the mountains of New Mexico.

It is under two feet high and does not dance like the water at Bellagio. The water cascades over the edge of the upper pot and into the base where it is pumped back up. I have had it running for less than a week and have resupplied the water twice. About a half gallon each time.

Evaporation is not negligible.  I rather think that the mega resorts in Las Vegas hire the same public relations people as BP uses to underplay their oil "spill."

I am sure that Caesars and Bellagio do not pay undocumented workers to carry buckets of water to replenish their fountains. So the question is whether the water pipe is metered for usage. New Mexico is a desert state and all public water usage is metered even on your own well. So come on let's hear the real figures of how much water is wasted in the desert to make it dance for the tourists?

The inquiring public wants to know. Especially those areas that are being harangued by legal officials to sell their water to a city that desperately needs it supposedly. Oh, and while we are on the subject of evaporation let's ask Phoenix how much it loses in its canal from the Colorado River to its 150 golf courses.

Will the gulf floor erupt?

May 24th, 2010 from space

Everyone is celebrating that the Horizon Deep Water well has at last been capped. My friend on the Louisiana coast hoped that everyone cheering did not think the problem was solved. Too much oil was spilled for that. Wiki posted an update with figures just a couple hours ago. The rate of the "leak" equaled the Exxon Valdez every one to two weeks. BP has not dealt with the enormity of that oil eruption from the gulf floor.

But of greater import is to keep in mind this is just a temporary fix. They sort of underplay that in the new don't they? Gulf geyser stops gushing, but will it hold from the Associated Press. But the stuff of nightmares is what they are not saying. BP is good at hushing up what it does not want the world to hear.

The Horizon Deepwater rig which exploded and sunk drilled through 1300 feet of sea floor 5000 feet down. It drilled into what the old oil men used to call a gusher of a pool of oil which may or may not have also included a pocket of explosive gas. Nobody knows what damage was done to the pipe below the sea floor or the exact extent of the pressure being created by the oil that now wants to desperately get out. Is that pressure so great that it ill actually crack the sea floor and release oil in a manner that cannot be contained with a cap?

And since nobody knows the answers to these questions do we have any right endangering life on earth by drilling below the surface of our seas?

This huge ecological disaster is not over. And there are thousands of wells still running the same risks with our fragile ecosystem.

Life in a Southern Border State

This morning's news, if you read through all the BP oil eruption stuff, mentioned the growing turf war among the drug lords in the Nogales area.

Nogales is a border town with part of it in Arizona and part in Mexico. It has been a relatively quiet area of the northern border of Mexico. It is one of those gateways to the south that US snowbirds take to their winter homes on Mexico's Gulf of Baja coast. It is also one of the routes used by drug lords for exporting drugs to the United States. Oh, and the coyotes use the same routes for bringing illegal immigrants to the US.

Running of drugs and illegals is money. And in the currently impoverished northern Mexico states money is something to fight over. And they see the border between our two countries as a small obstacle that has to be breached so they can make money to send home.

Because of the US economy with the construction industry slowed to almost a standstill we are using less migrant workers legal or otherwise. They have no money to send home across the border. Some are going home and some are finding other work in illegal drug trafficking. Mexico drug gangs have set up distribution centers in Albuquerque. They add a whole new twist to gang wars because they come after the innocents - and violently.

A lot of people have said a lot of negative things about the new Arizona law against illegal immigration. They are people that do not live in a border state. They know illegals that have tried to appear as citizens, people that have opened businesses and integrated into the community. These people without documents are different than may of us who live in border states know. They are not the hardworking landscapers and construction workers you can hire in southern months to do the work you could not afford to have done by licensed US contractors.

I think there are many problems with the Arizona law but they had the guts to run it up the flagpole and see who shot at it. It is a cry for help. Something has to be done about our southern border. The states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California bear all the cost and consequence of not doing something. And the situation is creating some strange bedfellows. I found myself agreeing on this issue with my friend that listens to Rush Limbaugh.

Oh, and making them all US Citizens is not the answer any more than Arizona's approach.

Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle

There is a rumor on the net that betting sites are taking bets on the first creatures in the Gulf of Mexico to go extinct. I don't gamble but were I to place a bet it would be on the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle.

The Kemp's Ridley, pictured on a south Padre Beach on the Texas coast,  is the rarest of all sea turtles and one of the two living species of Lepidochelys kempii. The other being the olive Ridley sea turtle, the most abundant.

Kemp's is one of the smallest sea turtles and ranges from the north US seashore to Rancho Nuevo in Mexico. It spends much of the year around the Louisiana coast where BP's oil "spill" is wrecking havoc.

Reports are they are being swept up in the drag oil booms used in clean up and set afire. Environmental groups out in the Gulf of Mexico trying to rescue marine life, turtles included are outraged that BP officials are setting fire to the amassed oil before checking for turtles rounded up with the oil. Ergo the outrage on the net that BP is burning sea turtles.

As the oil "spill" (a term used with leak by BP to minimize the effect on the public of this undersea eruption) spreads along the Florida coast more Kemp's turtles will be endangered and also the Florida Manatee which has had other issues before this.

All the oil coated brown Pelicans are making the news because of their visibility. Once on the threatened list they have made a remarkable recovery but who knows where this destruction of their habitat and food sources will lead. I certainly would not be willing to bet on their survival after this disaster. Would you?

So while we talk about this $20 billion fund that the government of the United States has required BP to set up for aid to those people on the gulf whose way of life and incomes are threatened by BP's negligent rush to get oil and ergo profits, what has been provided for the rescue of the creatures that cannot listen to the news? What a loss it will be to future generations if these creatures vanish. Who pays for that.

I love the brown pelican and I thought I would end this rather sad blog with a picture of one like they should be - free of oil.

My New Dream Machine

Almost 14 years ago I bought my first "Harriet Homeowner" tool - my 12 volt DeWalt battery powered drill. Only I was not your average Harriet Homeowner. I worked as a new construction electrician and did my own remodeling of my newly purchased aging home, and added additions.

Yesterday I finally accepted that it is dying. It was a sad moment. Close to losing a fur kid. This drill and I have been through so very much together: I have built a woodshed and privacy fence, screwed down hardibacker on a 2346 SF floor, replaced doors, dropped it from one roof and countless ladders (one of which was with me), drilled holes and screwed on electric boxes for dozens of posh cabins, and used it for numerous home repairs.

I would like to build a deck soon and have been looking at a new DeWalt. The 18v pictured above. If the 12v lasted 14 years what will I get out of this beauty? I am waiting breathlessly for my income tax refund so I can drive to Lowe's and bring it home to reside beside my DeWalt compound 12 inch miter saw. I am a DeWalt person.

And since we are on the subject of products that please me let me briefly mention Wright's bacon. It is BLT season and only Wright's peppered bacon will do. I always struggle with packaging. Like opening it. And bacon can be one of the worst. And lately I have come to loath the trend toward zip lock packaging on lunch meats and sliced cheese. Anyone found on that actually zips locked after the first use? But Wright has come out with a new resealable package that not only reseals, Shock, but opens easily to begin with. Way to go Wright! And so green because you don't have to put it in yet another plastic bag to keep it fresh between BLT's this summer while I am building that deck with my new DeWalt.

Course that gets us into the IRS slow response time on my refund. But I will save that for another day.

Dealing with Compassion Fatigue

The term compassion fatigue was one I first heard more than a decade ago. It is a term normally used to define a condition of caregivers who struggle to function in care giving environments that constantly present heart wrenching, emotional challenges. But it is now seen in those of us trying to affecting positive change in society and seeing little positive movement and coming to the realization that our mission, perceived as so vital, is elusive, if not impossible. This painful reality, coupled with first-hand knowledge of society's flagrant disregard for the safety and well being of the feeble and frail and helpless, takes its toll. Eventually, negative attitudes prevail. And what seems like chronic fatigue and indifference sets in. We shut down, turn out.

How many images can you see of oil-coated pelicans dying on a once pristine beach before you just shut some part of your mind off in an effort to save a modicum of your sanity? This shut off point comes earlier if you are dealing with personal issues that require you to care or even just function. We cannot all sit at our computers or in front of the television and cry over the horror.

Organizations dedicated to aid and rescue like the American Red Cross see it in their workers and provide counseling for them. They also try to rotate them so they don't have to show up for every disaster. And they know the third earthquake will get fewer donations of money than the first.

When did you start shutting down? After the Haiti Earthquake? Or the Chilean Earthquake? Or the one in Tibet? (Somewhere along there news began to more finely filter and we didn't get the whole story.) Or the 11 oil workers that died in the initial Deepwater Horizon explosion? Or the first oil killed pelican? I think they are up to over 300 in Louisiana alone.

They discovered after 9/11 that you can get post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from just watching the World Trade Centers collapse hundreds of times. And you can get compassion fatigue from being bombarded by images of situations you want desperately to change but feel helpless to do so. Both of these can trigger old issues you have not dealt with. Awareness is the first step toward relief.

It is especially important to normalize your life as much as possible with exercise and meditation and getting away from the televised and e-mailed  images for just a bit. And doing something! Even if it is just signing a petition or writing your congressman about reforms in off-shore leases and liability limits. (Yes, Virginia, there are legal limits to what BP's liability in this disaster are.) 

Remember accepting the presence of compassion fatigue is validation of the fact that you are a deeply caring individual. We need more of those in our world today to balance all the uncaring SOB's heading companies.

A Moment of Silence for the Earth

While I was totally aware of the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon on April 22, 2010 I have come late to the total scope of this disaster. Perhaps we all have. We were so willing to write it off as just another oil spill. But now it is officially our largest ever.

It is only within the last couple of days as the reality of the volume of the oil spill upon the waters of the Gulf of Mexico has reached the news, despite BP's efforts to minimize coverage of this event, that I am becoming fully aware of the horror of this. It isn't just the pictures of the oil slicked dying birds, or the soiled beaches I have walked upon in better days. It is the screams of the earth as the ecological microcosms of salt marshes and bayous are chocked off from oxygen and life which are such a disturbance in the force for me.

A cycle of birth and renewal begins in the shallow waters and inlets of the delta of Louisiana - or did. There are the things we can name like crayfish and clams and oysters and crabs and shrimp. And the things which are so tiny we are not aware of them - a veritable soup of amoeba and protozoa and micro-organisms which are the basis for a food chain like the tiny krill that feed the huge whales in Antarctica.  Without the marshes the sea dies.

The Gulf of Mexico is the 10th largest body of water on our planet. It comprises 582,000 square miles of sea water and coasts from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to the Florida Keys. Those that think this is just a few birds which have to be washed with Dawn are fooling themselves. The oil on the surface also decreases the exchange of water vapor between the sea and the atmosphere where clouds build to bring rain. Oil upon the waters disrupts oxygen exchange and because it is dark it effects the reflection of light and the penetration of that light below the surface where phytoplankton live. And given the size of the Gulf of Mexico and the spill which continues it is bound to effect climate and ecology of the area and the world for years into the future. And I am not even taking into effect the black smoke coming from the oil fires BP has set in an attempt to burn it before it reaches shore.

And all because of too many people that want to live life as they have always lived it and oil companies that are willing to cut corners to give us what we don't require - just want - at a price that lines their pockets.